


The Oxycontius Fragment

by Gammarad



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Classical Scholarship, Flash Exchange Fic, Footnotes, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 14:29:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20009836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: A controversial translation of a newly discovered parchment fragment with an unexpected piece of the story of Hades and Persephone.





	The Oxycontius Fragment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuciferxDamien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciferxDamien/gifts).



Translation by Keye Rhyncian, professor of Classics at the University of Ul Qoma, from the ancient Greek inscribed on a fragment of papyrus unearthed at Oxycontius in July, 2019:

\--[1]and awe-inspiring Persephone bore no children within her, white-armed she walked the land and flowers bloomed where her feet fell. Her mother, much-nourishing Demeter, walked by her side and fruit grew where flowers had bloomed and been visited by white-comb building bees[2]. For half the year the land flourished where the goddesses walked. 

But Zeus had decreed and Persephone returned to the arms of her husband, powerful Hades, and to the echoing caverns of their terrifying dark kingdom. There she found astonishment at his increase; he bore in his belly the first of the flower-nymphs, daughter of them both. Though mortal women bear all new mortals, among the gods miracles abound. 

"How came you by this great size, husband?" awe-inspiring Persephone asked of powerful Hades. And the answer came swiftly as he wished his wife to understand the change she had wrought in the dread lord of the shadowy underworld,[3] so long had she been away at her mother's side and separated from him while he underwent the bodily changes involved in the kindling of a new life.

"As nature will, as your power to cause new life wherever you may go, my white-armed wife, and as I have the nature of the deep Earth, to nurture new life but not to engender it of my own power, such will always be the way between us."[4] Powerful Hades wrapped his strong arms around his new daughter, the nymph Chloris, first of the Anthousai.

As it was prophesied, then, each turn of a year brought another young goddess of the Anthousai into being, formed by the passion between the awe-inspiring Persephone and her husband the powerful Hades, waxing within him as she danced beside her mother on the surface of the world bringing forth the flowers and fruit of the lands, brought forth by her hands into the world in the midpoint of their reunion[5], and another engendered by their lovemaking ere she departed.

The eldest of the Anthousai --

* * *

* * *

  


1 It is speculated that the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades precedes this segment.[return to text]

2 See _Hesiod's Theogony_ : 594 on bees.[return to text]

3 Homer's _Iliad_ : 15.187 on the division by lots where Poseidon drew the sea, Zeus the sky, and Hades the darkness.[return to text]

4 Dispute among scholars as to whether this is the first conventional male pregnancy. Flora Kerenyi in 2010 translated a fragment that she interpreted as the bearing of 'little' Dionysos by 'big' Dionysos who was conflated therein with Hades after the dual god who was both Dionysos and Hades had 'impregnated' Kore/Persephone.[return to text]

5 A reference to the Eleusian winter solstice festival of Haloea celebrating Demeter and Dionysos, who were closely linked to Persephone and Hades.[return to text]


End file.
